Agricultural planting systems are well known in the art. Such systems include a plurality of bins for retaining seeds, seeders for dispensing the seeds and soil disrupters to cover the seeds with soil after planting. Once a crop moves into the late season prior to harvest, nitrogen remaining in the soil is often lost through run-off. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system for retaining nitrogen in the soil. Such a system would not only reduce the amount of undesirable nitrogen run-off into nearby water supplies, but would reduce the amount of nitrogen needed to be applied to the subsequent year's crop. Additionally, it would be desirable to provide a secondary crop into the late season row crop to provide a second harvest.
It is known in the prior art to apply cover crops such as rye, winter wheat, clover, radish, turnips and other crops. Such seeds are typically spread over the late season cash crop in a broadcast manner, such as by airplane or similar broadcast system. One drawback to such application of cover crops is the inadequate coverage of the seeds with soil, inhibiting germination, even coverage and growth of the cover crops.
Due to the low clearance of prior art planters, it is not possible to run a low clearance prior art planter through an existing crop of late season corn or soybeans. It would, therefore, be desirable to provide a system for applying a cover crop to an existing late season cash crop in a manner that covered the cover crop seeds with soil. The difficulties encountered in the prior art discussed hereinabove are substantially eliminated by the present invention.